“Would you want a gun shop opening near an elementary school, 2 churches with nursery schools, and shops that cater to kids?” From the reactions expressed in news reports like this one and 2500 and counting change.org signatures from outraged locals, it seems a safe bet that Westchester Countians would rather have a halfway house, methadone clinic, or home for wayward Catholic priests in downtown Harrison than L&L Sports, a soon-to-open gun retailer.
“There are preschools everywhere, churches, there are kids everywhere, and it’s just not what we want for our community, and it came out of nowhere,” said Lauren Zomick, a parent. …
“It’s the location. If this were in a different part of town, maybe a little more isolated, I don’t know if there would be so much commotion about it,” said Jill Valente, a parent.
“It’s very weird that it’s at the elementary schools it’s the same road,” said Astrid Leenheers, a parent.
On the same road! As a school! L&L’s owner, Louis Zacchio, just wants to run his lawful business selling legal products in a responsible manner. As he says,
“I am taking every measure possible to protect my inventory from theft or damage,” Zacchio said. “I want to be a good neighbor. If you don’t like a product you don’t buy it, but you don’t try to put the person selling the product out of business.”
Silly man. He’s opening a firearms retailer in the New York tri-state area, one of the most gun-hostile enclaves in the country. Not an area known for its live-and-let-live sensibilities. The fact that a torches-and-pitchforks-style protest is planned for the next town board meeting on November 3 shouldn’t come as a surprise.
“It’s not illegal and it’s within the zoning so it’s kind of hard to say no,” said Harrison Town Board member Joe Stout. “It’s a legitimate business.”
If the rule of law means anything, if Mr. Zacchio and his lawyers are on the ball – L&L will already be open by then and serving the good people of Harrison. We wish him luck.
I, for one, know that whenever I buy a new killin’ iron, I can’t wait to get to rootin’ and tootin’ and sometimes I don’t make it all the way across the parking lot before I’m shootin’ and hootin’, so clearly the good townspeople have a valid point.
where everyone in their caves dies
Sounds like a neighbohood that needs a gun store, so the parents can protect their kids!
Good luck with your business, sir!
There’s protection of your kids, and then there’s protection of your kids.
In certain cases you may want and need a firearm to protect yourself and your family. The difficulty we face today is that we need to protect the kids from Liberal Progressivism and as of right now they are not in season.
However, the Second Amendment states: “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms…” and just now the arms we must bear are the ballots we cast. Vote the Progs out! Even if you have to vote for a RINO you may be preventing a Liberal takeover of the SCOTUS. Even if you cannot stand the jerk Donald Trump, vote for him against the criminal Hillary Clinton. Please.
They would rather it be an adult book store.
Better yet, a LQBTQZXYFART book store with titles like “I have 4 mommies and a questioning something as parents”
“…and it came out of nowhere.”
Did it, though? The owner saw a hole, and is attempting to fill it. If he’s wrong about the demand, he’ll go out of business just like any other establishment.
I wish him the best.. Although I question his business sense by opening a business where it appears it is not wanted… Doesn’t sound like the best market strategy to me..
The market will dictate whether or not it is wanted.
My town has a small handful of “massage parlors,” and many people have voiced their disgust, but they obviously have plenty of customers or they wouldn’t be in business.
They don’t sell “assault” weapons in New York, so all the guns they sell in that store are “safe”. So what is the problem?
This. They got their stupid SAFE act, so what’s everyone crying about?
A quick Google map view suggests, while legal, it seems to be an odd location for a sporting goods store. Mostly food shops in that area and, appropriately enough, across the street from a post office.
I wish them well but business wise it seems a poor location. Couple that with the uproar and it seems doomed from the begining.
I agree it’s not an ideal location but then again what is? In that area you don’t have a lot of options.
I bet he does a good business, he just needs rear parking so people can go there without being spotted and harassed. Just like a peep show dvd store.
Grocery stores and a post office means lots of daily traffic. People may not go gun shopping in the same trip to buy their groceries, but at least they have seen and know the shop is there when they are interested.
I never thought about it, but it’s probably a good thing there is not a gun store next to my grocery store. Every time I stopped to get a steak or some ribs, I’d have to buy new BBQ gun.
I live near this location. Good amount of both traffic and parking. No one with half a brain is going to go up against the town bureaucracy to open a retail business of any type, unless there is significant demand.
I’ve been shooting in Westchester for the last eight years or so and have seen the interest in the shooting sports start to climb rapidly.
Blueline Tactical spent a lot opening first a retail shop and then a few years later a state of the art indoor range.
RT Smoke N Gun expanded a small and quiet shop into a much bigger place, and upgraded/reopened their long dormant range.
“Pistol Permits” classically took about 4-6 months for application and processing, now they’re taking up to two years, due to the unbelievable backlog at the County Clerk’s Office.
I’m planning on attending this meeting and I’ll let all of you know what happens.
The people around there are pissed they didn’t get some kind of veto on the store. Because it’s their business what business opens there.
“There are preschools everywhere, churches, there are kids everywhere, and it’s just not what we want for our community, and it came out of nowhere,”
Hilarious, but so typical of NY. If you didn’t know what they were talking about, you’d think they were opening an “Armed Creepy Clown Training Academy and Saloon.”
“Not an area that’s really known for its live-and-let-live sensibilities.”
I got my bachelor’s there, and that was one of several “features” of NY that compelled me to leave immediately after graduation. I had the cops called on me one time for literally STANDING ON A BRIDGE. I was out for a walk, stopped on a bridge to admire the sunset, and a cop rolls up on me. He jams his brakes, jumps out, and starts asking questions about how I’m “feeling.” Confused as fuck, I asked him if somebody reported a possible suicide attempt on this bridge, and he nodded. I immediately busted out laughing, because the irony was so, so very thick. What I was actually doing while looking at the sunset was thinking about how happy I was with the direction of my life. I had made it through three tours in Iraq, got out, used the GI bill for my education, and was now one semester away from achieving a life-long dream of graduating (with honors) with an engineering degree and becoming an engineer. This is what was going through my head when some boot-licking, fuckwad New Yorker decided I was suicidal and called the cops on me. Lots of awkward sentences there. Anyway…
“Would you want a gun shop opening near an elementary school, 2 churches with nursery schools, and shops that cater to kids?”
I’d rather live near a gun store than live near an elementary school, churches or shops that cater to little cretins. They grow up to be Democrats.
I’d rather have a gun store than a church ANY day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Actually, I have a church a half block away from me and have had for the last 40 years I’ve lived here. We have marijuana stores, gun shops and honestly, I don’t give a hoot over where they are. In the long run, it’s hard to argue with stupid f— people.
What difference does it make if the gun shop opens near where children are? They can’t buy guns from him, so what’s the problem?
As others have said, if these people are correct, and this community really doesn’t want a gun shop there, it’ll go out of business. If it’s a problem, it’s a self-correcting one.
Bbbbecause just SEEING guns will pollute their precious minds and cause irreparable damage! Why, they may start playing cops and robbers or something equally anti-social!
Oh, that explains it. I have been wondering what kind of problems are they expecting from gun store and kids on the same street.
My wife and I live in Westchester and are overjoyed there will be a new gun shop opening. We were eagerly anticipating the new Cabelas that was supposed to open in Woodbury, but that fell apart last year. we plan to stop in as soon as we can and support the new business.
People in Westchester aren’t content with just running their own miserable lives. They have to make sure that their entire environment is precisely as they want it. Elitist, entitled and absolutely useless in any circumstance that can’t be solved solely through the use of a credit card.
I think I’ve seen something like this play out before…
https://youtu.be/qam1fbQmA_s?t=3m5s
Typical Westchester nimby crap. Not to mention the total illogic of thinking a gun store is in and of itself dangerous.
I grew up in Scarsdale so this attitude is all too familiar and makes me so glad I live on the opposite side of the country.
For what it’s worth when I was in high school the local gun stores I knew of were on Central Avenue, which is a major commercial strip or downtown White Plains. Then again when I was in high school Scarsdale had an indoor rifle range and an interscholastic rifle team.
I lived in White Plains all my life. I remember at one time at least three gun shops on Central Ave within about a mile – Lindsay’s, Grenville and Male-Town.
Rhetorical questions to pose at the next town hall meeting:
When’s the last time you heard of a shooting AT a gun store?
When’s the last time you heard of a shooting OUTSIDE a guns tore?
When’s the last time you heard of a shooting NEAR a gun store from a customer who had just bought a gun?
Since criminals are prohibited from buying guns, and can’t even get a permit to buy a gun, what makes you think that any criminal element will be hanging out in or near the gun store?
Their concern is just the opposite … that people might get tbe idea that gun owners aren’t criminals.
Guaranteed there’s a quiet majority of men around there that have always wanted to own a gun and never had a place nearby to go check one out. Doing a good business will be no problem. Constantly fighting hoplophobes who use zoning laws and every other dirty trick up their sleeve to make life hard for the business, will be the problem.
My child’s school shares the same roof as a Sporting goods store, which sells GUNS. No outrage here.
I am now dumber for having clicked on both of those links. I expected to see stupid, but dang…
Undermine a school gun free zone? You mean, like when I drop off my son in the drop off drive through of his junior high every day? Like that?
People are just so loony sometimes.
I set up a counter-petition:
https://www.change.org/p/town-board-of-harrison-sign-this-petition-to-support-the-l-l-gun-shop-in-harrison-ny?recruiter=1341795&utm_source=share_for_starters&utm_medium=copyLink
Thanks, I signed it. As a new citizen living in a southern state it makes me very frustrated to see this type of infringement taken as the norm. Perhaps some similar petitions for the CA nonsense might help communicate to those politicians that we will keep millions of dollars out of the CA economy.
Thank you for signing. I’m planning to attend the Town Board meeting tomorrow night.
I was just at the Thursday Nov 3 meeting (The previous evening there was a meeting about L&L that I wasn’t informed about) – I had to leave at about 9:30 or so – and there appeared to be at least three or four other people left to speak. Time limits were stated at the opening of comments, but not at all enforced. Of course, the “pro-gun and pro-L&L” side was vastly outnumbered. I spoke, as did an older fellow and a woman whose name I didn’t catch. A friend of mine from the shooting community, Evet, spoke as well. Some members of the community simply had an issue with the proximity to the school, but every time someone said, “do we want this in Harrison at all?” it received resounding applause. I think at least some of the anger in the audience was due to a perceived imbalance in which permits have been issued – there was some sentiment that L&L was given a CO much quicker than other businesses, their home remodeling, etc. The Council appeared to be actively soliciting case law from the audience re: towns that used zoning or other means to prevent or shut down a gun shop. As I was leaving, one woman suggested that the Council, that very evening adopt a motion to suspend your CO for six weeks – I’m not sure if that had any actual traction or is even possible, but it drew a lot of applause. I also got something else from the audience that “it’s OK for gun shops to exist, just not here.” I personally don’t think gun shops are a source of crime and negligent discharges, but obviously most in attendance felt that way. What’s kind of shocking is that they seemed to not even care where firearm dealers are located in other communities,as long as they’re not in Harrison. I commend Evet’s courage to call them out on that hypocrisy. I plan on going to L&L as soon as I can to see what’s going on – I’m hearing conflicting reports about whether they’re open, not-yet-open, soft-open, etc…
Good luck to the gun store owner !!
All the Harrison pantywaists liberals should be more concerned about all the illegal slimeballs sniffing around their kid’s school and not worry about a legal gun shop.
Remember The Harrison Donut Shop, located just a few doors away from the new gun shop?
On July 30, 2008 Kamal Ahmed (the owner) followed a 14-year-old girl into a bathroom at The Harrison Donut Shop.
He then restrained her by pinning her to the wall and sexually assaulted her.
Mr. Ahmed was sentenced to prison.
Yup …. Sexual Assault Shop or Legal Gun Shop: Take your choice!
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